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New Details on GM's Coming War With Tesla

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Bloomberg Businessweekpublished an article with General Motors's (GM - Get Report) outgoing and incoming CEOs -- Daniel Akerson and Mary Barra on Dec. 12 in which the automaker's executives appear to provide the magazine with revealing details about the next-generation Tesla(TSLA - Get Report)-slaying Chevrolet Volt 2.0, the current generation which entered production more than three years ago."

Or did they?

I'm given to attempting to straighten out what was written in the Businessweek article as opposed to the interpretation that was made by the reporters, Tim Higgins and Bryant Urstadt.

"Although GM has hinted that it's working on a next generation of electric vehicle, Akerson says it's aiming for a compact car that can go 200 miles on a charge, and carry a generator, too. While it will be similar to the Volt, engineers are working on generators that could run on gas, diesel, or natural gas. The increased electric range is coming, in part, from advances in battery chemistry. GM is planning to bring the model out in 2016, for about $30,000, according to a person familiar with the idea -- who asked not to be named because the plans aren't public. It's a project that the company doesn't want to say much about but signifies how it's been trying to move past inventing things to putting inventions into showrooms. "We want it to be a moon shot so we can surprise the competition," Akerson says.

Okay, so GM CEO Akerson says this car will be a surprise. That obviously explains why he is making the otherwise inexplicable foot-fault of volunteering to spill the beans on the surprise car.

I hope you are detecting my irony here. CEO Akerson basically says it's vital that this future "moon shot" car remains a secret, right after having disclosed the range and architecture of what ostensibly sounds like the Chevy Volt 2.0.

The car as described by Bloomberg doesn't add up at all. Let's consider the implications if we take the Bloomberg article description of this new car at face value. Here are the six ingredients:

The only way you can square this circle is if the last point is true -- a radical new battery chemistry. It is currently believed that the Chevy Volt 1.0 battery costs at least $500 per kWh, including packaging and thermal management.

Considering that the Volt 1.0 battery is 16.5 kWh, this would mean a battery cost of at least $8,000. The whole car sells for a base price of $35,000 ($40,000 nicely equipped), and we really don't know if GM turns a profit on the transaction -- even counting only variable costs. Let's call it breakeven.

This Volt 1.0 battery yields 38 miles of range. The battery's gross capacity of 16.5 kWh yields a net capacity of 10.8 kWh. Dividing 200 miles by 38 suggests the need to increase capacity five-fold in order to reach 200 miles. In other words, multiply the Volt 1.0's battery cost of $8,000 by five and you'll get $40,000.

Therefore, in order to yield 200 miles of range, the battery alone would cost $40,000. This doesn't square with GM's suggested price of $30,000 for the entire car. Considering the $5,000 price cut on the car -- from $35,000 to $30,000 -- we would have to assume a 90% reduction in battery cost -- from $40,000 to $4,000.

Some day, such a 90% reduction will happen. Perhaps in 10 years, perhaps 15 years. But not in a car that will be in showrooms by 2016.

The caveat here is that we don't know what we don't know. There is always the theoretical possibility that a decimal point's worth of revolutionary technology was discovered by GM or one of its suppliers in the last couple of years, and became ready for prime time so that the car can be made in volume by 2016. Sort of like nuclear power in the 1940s.

The other thing that's suspicious about GM's claims as reported by Bloomberg is the combination of a 200-mile range electric car and an on-board generator. Why? If you're going through the trouble of adding the heavy and space-consuming overhead of a generator, you get vastly diminished returns once the battery is capable of going longer than X-number of miles.

Of course, what the appropriate "X" number of miles is, is a source of contention between GM, Ford (F - Get Report), Toyota(TM - Get Report), Honda(HMC - Get Report), VW, Mercedes, BMW and others. GM and BMW are toward the higher end of the curve with 38 miles for the Chevrolet Volt 1.0, for example. Toyota is at the low end with 6 miles, although their next-gen plug-in Prius will probably hit at least 10-12 miles. Ford, Honda and VW are mostly in the 10-22 mile range.

Why is this? Most people drive disproportionately short distances between their ability to charge. The average commute for a US worker is close to 12 miles. Charge at home, charge at work and a 12-mile car can enable you to drive on 100% electric on a majority of days.

Once you go beyond such a "sweet spot" -- whether 12 miles or 38 miles or some other number -- you get severely diminishing returns for a large portion of the potential buyers. The size of the generator -- such as a regular gasoline engine -- still has to be strong enough to enable highway speeds, uphill treks and at least four people in the car with luggage. So that cost doesn't come down.

To wit, Tesla is planning its own 2016-2017 200 mile range car that would cost $40,000 or less -- sometimes a $30,000 number is thrown out there -- and it will be a pure electric car; no generator.